Again; healthy for years, now I have a fitness test for a job, hai, allow me to give you a bad case of flu or infection or some stupid shit that makes you feel like death.
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As the messengers who rebelled against the farther of all fell from grace, so to does the mind of a man against the farther of time.
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- POST REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld
Open that to cross check what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with the subject.
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In this context however I refer to the 'Fall' of The Discworld by Terry Pratchett as entropy and fate saw fit to inflict Alzheimers on one of the great literary minds and he has covertly handed off, I suspect, the Discworld Chronicles to Stephen Baxter, his co-author on The Long Earth series [unrelated to the Discworld, and something like a sci-fi alt-future series].
For those who read the series, and are more observant than the average human, you may be familiar with quite a dramatic change in the structure which started around Unseen Academicals, which was book 37 of the series, and continued, in the adult series, into Snuff, 39 and really hit hard in Raising Steam, book 40.
Loss of key identity of certain characters established over multiple volumes, lack of humor and subtly, and blatant retconning [the rewriting of established lore to suit the present] even beyond the marvelous 'Thief of Time Retcon Solution'*.
*Thief of Time's plot concerned history on the Discworld, and a glass clock which, once smashed, also smashed the chronological order of history.
For example, technically Brutha, one of the central protagonists of the 13th Discworld book, Small Gods, is alive during the same time period as philosophers who speak to Teppic, Pyramids, book 7, who is trained by Dr. Cruces who is justifiably killed by then Corporal Carrot, Men at Arms, book 15, who later commands an Omnian named Constable Visit-the-Infidels-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets, Feet of Clay, book 19, who states that Brutha was alive hundreds of years ago.
The temporal inconsistency is such that the relative chronology of the Discworld between individual characters over multiple books doesn't make a dam lick ah sense.
Forward Thief of Time which explains it all away as a shattering of the timeline which required a patchwork string and duck tape job to rebuild. Only an outside observer could know, e.g. readers, history monks, and Death and Susan who remark upon the inconsistency in Thief of Time itself, the whole truth of the matter.Unseen Academicals wasn't too bad, generally speaking. The usual Discworld structure and cultural exploration was there, so too was humor, character development, and the focus on a central protagonist.In the aftermath of Making Money it was an acceptable addition to the Discworld Chronicles in my opinion.
Snuff was something of a decline. Not the abject nonsense that is Raising Steam, but certainly not in the same grade as Thud!, the previous Watch novel. You have to note presentation and handling of the books content. Being a country copper is nothing like being a city policeman. The theme and structure worked, quality content, but its format was degrading from the flowing narrative of all previous Discworld novels to clunky set pieces which didn't intermix.
...I'm finding this hard to word, but imagine threads.
A good story is all about interwoven threads, seemingly interconnecting randomly, but there's always a central plot which is inexorably progressed by each thread as they touch the core. This is a proper narrative.
A bad story is a pulsing line of threads, the core being prodded by a thread, retracted and then prodded by the next, each prod a set piece, like an artists artifact, and an improper narrative.
Making Money and every other book previously was the central protagonist being touched by a succession of threads. Unseen Academicals was similar in it's smooth flow. Snuff had set pieces but it still managed to bridge them together.
...Then Raising Steam crash landed...
That book, good grief.
- It's called book 3 of the Moist Von Lipvig series, but he's only in 2/3rds of it.
- Established ideas from previous volumes are totally forgotten, including The Undertaking, which was started in Thud!, mentioned in Making Money, and then binned by Raising Steam.
- The writer skipped wholesale over Moist and Adora Belle's wedding, which was criminal.
- Several major characters either act out of character, such as Moist engaging in violence which is almost the polar opposite of his character established in his prior two volumes. Add to that Bashfulsson who a] is a modern Deep-Downer who is allied with Anhk-Morpork and b] isn't a violent guy. Thud! made a point that he was a thinking Grag, not a violent one for fucks sake.
- Or characters have their own histories retconned to such an extent that FUBAR would be appropriate in their description [notably Adora Belle's infancy being in anyway related to the Clacks when her farther invented the first commercial towers no more than 15 years prior to Raising Steam and she's around 30 years old for crying out loud].
- There is no way in hell Moist could've commanded the 1000 Golems gained by the city during the events of Making Money to do anything whatsoever. Firstly he would've had to get into the Pink Pussycat club, secondly he would've had to summon the Professor, thirdly he would've had to bargain with the guy who was notoriously misanthropic and obstreperous for command dialogue in Umian, and fourthly it wasn't even mentioned that he did any of that, but only that Moist strolled down into their tomb and said hop to it lads despite the fact that Havelock probably has a continual guard over the whole boiling of em seeing as his currency is based on the buggers.
- And Gilt and Cosmo were antagonists worthy of the description, whilst the almost irrelevant bloody figure of the neigh mad Grag Ardent wasn't anything like a good counter point.
Beyond all this, and back to my original point, is that you have the aforementioned issue of set pieces. There is very little continuity between each of the events.
Half the time the author is going on about the personal worlds of people whose only real connection to the books events is that they sent a letter to the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork for some reason.
The book moves forward, but by jerks and starts, and with the bastardization of the Discworld's own lore it makes an avid fan like me twitch and cringe every disconnected and randomized scene.
This fucking mess I highly suspect, on the grounds that it reads almost precisely like The Long Earth series in structural format, was written mostly by Stephen Baxter who is now authoring the Discworld because Terry Pratchett's brain has succumbed to Alzheimers and the series is worth too much, both culturally and fiscally, to let it die with him.
I've got nothing to prove it but the cross comparison between this book and The Long Earth series, and most people probably can't see it, but I've got enough to prove it to myself, and generally speaking that's all that matters.
In my view this is where the series will fall to it's grave, if not commercially than at least in terms of quality.
It's a shame because some of the best Discworld titles were, in the adult series which is all I personally read, 29 Night Watch, 33 Going Postal, 34 Thud!, and 36 Making Money. I mean, I love pretty much all of them from 4 Mort onwards because it was by the forth title Terry found his feet and started to make the magic happen, but those last few before Unseen Academicals were where he really shone as far as I'm concerned.
All things end, and should end, but I hope Terry hasn't got enough of his mind left to realize Raising Steam happened. That someone took his life's work and just shredded it in wood chipper. You'd think someone would be reviewing it before publication if he can't handle it anymore.
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On a personal note, as a genius who values his mental facilities above all else [take it all, I don't care, so long as I can still think] I pity Terry like no one else except those of my kind.
The worst thing for someone who values their mind is to see it degrade from inside out, knowing at their core that they're losing control. Better to lose all possessions, all limbs, all life, all at once, than the mind, bit by bit, over years.
Leave me my mental acuity and you can have the rest.
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I got something similar to say on the subject of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which was fantastic until he hit Changes, book 12, and then went off the rails and lost the plot, but that's for another day.
Adios.
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PS: Because I have the attention span of a housefly and the creative imagination of several terminal novelists, I wrote this when I saw the image on the page on DeviantART:
- http://cvaj.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-demon-binder.html
If it wasn't for trying to be a policeman, I would gladly expand upon that and then some, but I need money to live and writing this stuff doesn't pay anything.
C'est la vie.
